“Jelena?” Erick prompted softly.
She sniffed and looked away, wiping her eyes. “We’re going to get to Arkadius, and we’re going to get there in time, but I don’t want to lead trouble into Mom’s lap. Normally, I’d be happy to take these bastards straight to the Nomad so Leonidas and Grandpa could deal with them, but Leonidas can’t deal with anybody right now, and I don’t want them—it concerns me that Stellacor knows our heading. They may know all about the family business. And the family.”
“Stanislav can protect the family if they try something,” Erick said. “And he can help us too.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe now that you’ve been in combat, you’ll let him train you more seriously in telekinesis, so you have more weapons to use against thugs in combat armor.”
“I did all right when I had to,” Jelena said, though she knew she’d feel more comfortable battling multiple enemies if she could hurl them all across the room with the barest thought. She was still surprised she’d managed to throw the one man hard enough to knock him out—knocking out someone in shock-absorbing combat armor wasn’t easily done with anything short of an e-cannon blast. Seeing the dogs in danger must have given her more strength and fear to pour into her attack.
“Yes, and I’m glad you handled a couple of them, but you could be truly powerful. Not that leading a dog army isn’t wonderful, but you have potential to do a lot more than that. Stanislav has said so. You share his blood, after all, and he can do amazing things.”
“So could Tymoteusz,” she said, naming her crazy uncle who had kidnapped Thor and been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people when he’d created an earthquake on Arkadius. And then he’d concocted a plan to make himself ruler over the entire system. If not for Mom and Leonidas taking down his ship and killing him, that might have actually happened. Jelena had never spoken with Tymoteusz, but she’d heard about him from Thor and the others, and had confirmation that he’d been spaced in the head. And super powerful. A dangerous combination.
“What do you mean?” Erick’s brow furrowed. “So what?”
“I share his blood, too, right? I don’t want to turn crazy and become . . . and stop caring about people. And animals.”
“Stanislav isn’t like that. And he doesn’t seem in danger of going crazy. Granted, he’s quirky.”
“Yes, and so is Mom.”
“That does seem to run in your family.” He bumped her arm with his fist.
“You’re quirky, too, so you can’t judge. Look, let’s not talk about this now. What’s important is getting to Arkadius, like you said, but I think if we show up in the Snapper, we might never get to land.”
“We’re not the legal owners, so we’d have trouble trading it in for another ship.”
“What if we docked it somewhere else for a couple of weeks and took public transport to Arkadius? Stellacor wouldn’t be looking at transport ships with hundreds of passengers aboard.”
“Maybe not, but who’s going to pay for the docking fees? Even if we parked at Starfall Station, which is pretty close, we’d have to pay a premium to leave the ship there for multiple days.”
“It would be cheaper to go to a planet and pay some farmer a few tindarks to park in a field. Or—” She straightened as the thought of fields launched a new idea into her mind. “What if we go to Upsilon Seven and park there? We could look up Thor, and maybe he’d help us. Maybe he has a ship that we could use.”
Erick groaned. “Not him again.”
“He’s powerful, too, if you want a Starseer ally that’s more comfortable with hurling people around.”
“I don’t want an assassin ally. And I highly doubt that we’d have a trouble-free landing if we showed up in Arkadius’s orbit in an assassin’s ship. Do you think the Alliance doesn’t know what he’s flying? Can Thorian even fly?”
“He probably can by now. Part of his uber training and all. Oh.” Jelena thumped her hand on her thigh as the idea further solidified in her mind. “This is good. We’ll find him and ask him for help—even if he doesn’t think he owes us anything, he definitely owes Leonidas. He should feel obligated to join us, at least for the time it takes to get to Arkadius, and then if he’s flying with us, he won’t be assassinating people. Maybe we can even talk him out of finishing that morbid list he’s got in his head.”
“We?” Erick slapped his palm to his forehead. “Jelena, we’re not a we when it comes to talking to Thorian. Or anything crazy you plan. And I don’t want to ask him for help. He’s just a little kid.”
“He’s twenty now.” Jelena didn’t point out that she was even younger, just in case Erick had forgotten.
“He’s arrogant.”
“You barely remember him.”
“I remember him being arrogant.”
“You just thought that because he was younger than you and could do things you couldn’t.” Jelena had never found Thor to be arrogant, but she also hadn’t been competition for him. She’d barely been able to scratch an itch with her mind back then, so she’d been playing catch-up to all of them. “Even if we don’t ask Thor for help, or if we don’t even find him, if we go to Upsilon Seven, it’ll be a less expensive place to temporarily store the Snapper. And we can get transport from there.”
“Probably in the back of a cargo hauler full of cattle,” Erick grumbled. “Or in a refrigerated hold full of steaks.”
“That’s perfect. Why would Stellacor look for us in a meat locker?”
Erick shook his head at her. “I don’t know why you’re worried about power making you crazy. You’re already spaced.”
Ignoring his ongoing frown, Jelena plugged in the coordinates for Upsilon Seven. They could drop their passenger off there—oh, how she wished Erick hadn’t been so efficient in defending sickbay, so those thugs could have simply taken Masika—and find Thor. Then, finally then, they could rejoin the rest of the family.
Chapter 11
The Snapper flew over lush prairies thick with blue and green grass, with cattle grazing, strung out around watering holes. Jelena guided the ship toward Blue Armadillo, one of the few major population centers on the continent and the city denoted by a missing puzzle piece on Thor’s map.
Unlike most of the skyscraper-filled galactic cities, this one sprawled across the rolling hills, most buildings made from wood and stone, and rising only two or three stories. Here and there, stadiums for sporting events and rodeos took up prominent spots in the city. A river flowed by on the southern end with a space base perched along its bank. The base was a modern facility in the shape of an open-walled cylinder with six levels of ship docks sticking out like spokes on bicycle wheels. Several roads and a half dozen sets of train tracks went to the base.
“Paying for storage there will cost more than leaving the Snapper in a farmer’s field,” Erick said, walking into NavCom.
“We won’t stay long. I want to see if Thor has arrived and also take the animals to the shelter here. I already talked to the lady who runs it, and she agreed to help. I’ll be sad to let them go, but we wouldn’t be able to take them on a transport, not easily.”
Erick snorted. “Yes, Stellacor may indeed find us in a refrigerated meat locker if we’re buying tickets for a hundred dogs, cats, and pigs as well as two people.”
“Is Masika awake?”
“I heard a few thumps coming from her cabin.”
“You didn’t knock on the door?”
“You just told me to check and see if she was alive.”
They hadn’t seen her during the four-day trip to Upsilon Seven, not since taking her out of sickbay. Jelena had been afraid there might be complications if she tried to keep the woman sedated the whole trip, so they’d removed the IV and her bonds and left her in her cabin with food and water.
Jelena had considered locking the hatch, since the guest cabin had a fold-down sink and toilet, but had assumed Masika could break out if determined. Instead, she’d locked her own hatch at night when she slept and had set a
few alarms so they would know if Masika started roaming the ship. She’d kept to herself. Maybe after her escape attempt had failed, she’d figured there wasn’t much point to fighting them, not when she would find herself stranded in space without a pilot if she won.
“Here,” Jelena said, waving Erick to her seat. “We’re in a holding pattern. I’m waiting for space traffic control to approve our request to dock. I think we’re waiting for those people to load their cargo and for that slot to open up.” She pointed to the view screen, which showed a mix of drones and cowboys on horses funneling hundreds of steer up a ramp toward a big freighter. “Let me know when we get an approval. I’m going to talk to Masika.”
“Take your staff. And maybe an injector full of drugs.”
Jelena didn’t make the sickbay stop for the drugs, but she did pause in her cabin to grab her meager collection of physical currency and also her staff. The first couple of days after the encounter with the Stellacor ship, she’d carried it everywhere with her, even into the lav, but since Masika hadn’t left her cabin, she’d become less vigilant.
She knocked on Masika’s hatch and stepped back, concerned the woman would greet her with a punch.
But the Masika who opened the hatch did not look like fighting. Her brown skin was paler than usual, and she looked rumpled and weary, as if she hadn’t been sleeping.
“Are you all right?” Jelena asked, trying to remember if she’d done any flying that might have affected someone prone to airsickness. No, not since escaping the other ship.
“What do you care?” Masika grumbled, looking toward the wall beside Jelena instead of into her eyes. Odd, she usually had a challenging and direct gaze.
Maybe she felt bad about leaping on Jelena and Erick in NavCom when they hadn’t done anything to her.
Jelena snorted softly. Sure. Besides, she could understand wanting to escape if she were being held prisoner somewhere.
“Well, I want you to be healthy enough to leave my ship,” Jelena said. “And preferably return to your Stellacor employers so they’ll stop chasing after me.”
“Have we reached Starfall Station?”
“Not exactly.” Jelena glanced toward the hull but remembered that none of the guest cabins had portholes. Masika wouldn’t be able to see the grassy prairies stretching away from the city. “Upsilon Seven.”
Masika groaned, stepped back, and sat on her bunk. “Why don’t you ever take me where you say you’re going to?”
“I like being unpredictable. But look, you can arrange transport from here, right? We’re landing at the Blue Armadillo space base.”
Masika stared glumly at the deck. Jelena didn’t understand. Didn’t she want to escape and go back? She’d certainly seemed to want to when she’d attacked them in NavCom.
“That’s a long way from Alpha 17,” Masika said. “An expensive trip.”
“I figure you can comm your people, and they’ll come get you, as they seem oddly attached to you, but even if that’s not true, here.” Jelena held out a few bills. “This should be enough to buy a ticket home.”
Masika stared at her hand and didn’t reach for the bills. “You’re giving me money? I didn’t agree to work for you.”
“No you didn’t, and you’ve been a pain in the ass since we brought you aboard. This is for painting the cabin.” Jelena nodded to the mural. If Stellacor hadn’t been after the woman, Jelena would have tried to get her to stay and finish the rest of the ship. She was tempted to make a pitch anyway.
Masika slowly reached out and accepted the money, though she stared at it as if she didn’t understand what it was. Then she looked toward the bulkhead, or perhaps toward the mural painted on it.
“Is it beautiful out there?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“Upsilon Seven. I’ve heard it’s beautiful when the suns set over the prairies. There are supposed to be areas where the grass grows in a rainbow of colors, all dotted with wildflowers. And then the suns set over it, highlighting everything red and orange like burnished copper. A challenge to an artist’s palette to capture it. And once you get away from the cities, they say you can walk for miles without seeing another human being. A person could disappear in a place like that. Off the grid. Off the radar. Maybe have a little ranch house and just come into town now and then to sell her art for cash.”
Jelena stuck her free hand in her pocket while she puzzled out the comments. And the fact that their burly combat cyborg—or whatever she was—used words like burnished and rainbow.
“Masika . . . do you not want to go back?” Jelena asked, though that hardly seemed possible. She’d fought hard to be reunited with those Stellacor people.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“Why not? You’re not a prisoner, are you?” Indignation arose in Jelena as she imagined Masika being the equivalent of one of the lab animals locked up in a cage.
“If I am, it’s because I knowingly walked into the trap.” She still wasn’t meeting Jelena’s eyes, instead continuing to gaze toward the wall, as if she could see through it to the grasses and sunsets outside that she ached to experience.
“Why would you do that?”
Masika's mouth twisted with bitterness. “The bait was right.”
“Well, you’re not in a cage now. Why don’t you just walk away and go where they can’t find you? Like you said, Upsilon Seven might be an ideal place to go off the radar.”
“I can’t. I gave them my word. Not to try to return would be breaking that word.” Masika took a deep breath and pulled her gaze from the wall. “It’s not forever. Ten years was what they asked for, and it’s what I agreed to. We made a deal. They expect . . .” There was that twist of the mouth again. Did she truly care what they expected? Or maybe she’d realized she’d made a deal with people who weren’t good people.
“Thor once said that the expectations of others are a cage we build around ourselves, and it’s the hardest kind of cage to break out of.”
“Thor?”
“Prince Thorian.” Jelena wondered if she would have to clarify further, since the empire was gone, and there weren’t technically any princes anymore, at least according to the Alliance.
“Hm. He’s been in hiding since the fall of the empire, hasn’t he? When did you hear him say that?”
“When he was ten.”
“He said that when he was ten?” Masika asked dryly.
“I think when you’re a prince, the expectations of others are a problem you deal with from birth.”
Masika grunted. “Probably. What’s worse, do you think? People having expectations for you to live up to? Or nobody caring enough about you to have expectations?”
“I . . . don’t know.” Jelena wasn’t sure what to make of this conversation. All she’d planned to do was hand Masika the money and open the hatch for her to leave.
The comm beeped.
“We’ve got permission to dock,” Erick said. “Unless you want me to try to do it, you better come back up here.”
“As I recall, landing spaceships isn’t one of your superhero powers,” Jelena said and stepped out of the cabin. Alfie waited out there and wagged her tail. Maybe she wanted to see the grasses too. It would be hard giving her up to a family here, but that would probably be better for her than keeping her indefinitely on a ship.
She caught Masika still looking at her. Feeling she should say something more, to impart some words of wisdom, Jelena added, “There are some situations where keeping your word isn’t the honorable thing to do.”
Anger flashed in Masika’s dark eyes. “I’m sure you know all about honor, thief.”
Maybe speaking again hadn’t been a good idea. Still, Jelena felt compelled to defend herself. “History doesn’t call those who helped free slaves thieves. It condemns those who kept slaves in the first place.”
“Animals aren’t slaves.”
“No? Look up the definition and expand your preconceptions of the word person.” Jelena walked up
to NavCom, sat down when Erick vacated the seat, and took them toward the docking spot flashing on the holomap.
“She going to be trouble?” he asked.
“Maybe to her employers someday, but not to us. I don’t think. I gave her some money so she can leave.”
“That seems safest for us.”
“Yes.” Jelena took a steadying breath and glanced at him as the freighter descended. “I’d like to take a day and look for Thor. We also need to arrange a way to transport the animals to the shelter. It’s in the country outside of town, and they don’t have any way to come pick up a hundred dogs, cats, and pigs.”
“You’re not mentioning the part of the plan where we seek transport to Arkadius.”
“That happens after the other two things. Can you do me a favor and find a rickety vehicle of some kind that we can use to get around town? Something inconspicuous? In case it’s not legal to transport animals onto the planet without inspections or licenses or who knows what?” Jelena imagined gate guards raising a lot of eyebrows over thrust bikes pulling escape pods full of dogs and cats and pigs. “Something like you cobbled together back on Inner Trason and Dustor maybe.”
“You want another of my junkyard specials?”
“They’re fine and inexpensive modes of transportation. Your skilled hands haven’t failed us yet.”
“Sure, put an extra scoop on my Asteroid Icy. Have you commed your mother and explained everything yet?”
“Not yet. I’ve been debating on how to explain everything.”
“I hear starting at the beginning and saying everything that’s happened works.”
“I will.”
“Before you go looking for Thorian.”
The Rogue Prince (Sky Full of Stars, Book 1) Page 16